Improving Birth Outcomes Requires Closing the Racial Gap

In 2013, the maternal and child health community received encouraging news from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). After having stalled from 2000 to 2005, our nation’s infant mortality rate declined 12% from 2005 through 2011, to 6.05 infant deaths per 1000 live births.1 The CDC also reported a significant decline in the infant mortality rate for African American mothers, as well as a slight narrowing of the long-standing two-to-one gap in rates between African Americans and whites.